TP-Link AV1200 Powerline Kit Review

I think it’s best if I first briefly explain the dire situation I have found myself in. I have recently moved into an apartment that has the worst broadband ever. And when I say worst, I mean some rural countrysides in the middle of nowhere receive better broadband than I do. I am literally in the middle of a huge digital deadzone right now. It sucks. I receive around 4MB broadband to the apartment, which in this day and age, should really be much better. So because of this, I am currently experimenting with ways to distribute this terrible speed in the different rooms of the apartment.

TP-Link reached out to us and sent us one of their AV1200 Powerline Kits to test because of course, who wants to see anyone with low broadband speeds right? The official model number for those of you who want to look into it more is TP-Link TL-WPA8630P. Inside the kit you get one main plug which should really be situated near your router, and one adapter, which I currently have in my office. Please note, that I am coming from a wireless networking adapter from Netgear which is a few years old now. I will be posting the results and speed differences too.

I will let you know now that I am no expert when it comes to setting up networks, wired or wireless, but for the testing, and hopeful change of speed results I studied the instruction manual thoroughly. It’s not very long, and cuts down each setup step into bite sized chunks which made it very easy to read and understand. Although saying that, I have no idea why this happened, and don’t know if it’s something that TP-Link have as a feature, but plugging both plugs into wall sockets just worked, without having to click the pair button. They were absolutely plug and play which I thought was a superb feature. It will definitely benefit those who aren’t tech savvy.

What did I tell you? Digital deadzone right? But I wanted to show you this as I am pretty much maximizing my download speed coming into the apartment. and by using the TP Link AV1200 kit I am able to better distribute that speed around the rooms, much better than I can with a wireless network. Where this kit does shine however is the fact the powerline adapters also have wireless connectivity. So for example, my router is in my living room and I want to use a laptop in my office. I can connect wirelessly to the plug adapter that’s in the office rather than the router, cutting out completely any interference from walls and doors between the two rooms.

Okay, so I know this review isn’t perfect. I know that I’m only receiving 4MB broadband to the apartment which doesn’t bode well for testing, but from the results I did see, thee TP-Link AV1200 kit has definitely made a huge improvement to my wireless network set up I had before. The easy set up process as well made this kit very easy to recommend to people who want to potentially set up a home network in the house. You know, if you have a desktop in one room, an XBox in your kid’s bedroom and a laptop to float around with? These will definitely improve your connection speeds to the router. The only thing you will need to keep in mind is that for this product to work, you need to be on the same electrical ring circuit. They will not jump if your upstairs and downstairs are on different rings.